How to Survive an Identity Theft

By Janet LaceyPublished: Sunday, September 20th, 2009

It is indeed a very sad story when one listens to a victim of an identity theft. Because, most of the times the thief has no end to his greed and makes away with literally everything that the person owned. Imagine, your identity is stolen. All that belongs to you is now in his hands!

It is estimated that around 8 billion dollars is lost every year by credit card companies due to identity theft. But the sad part is they do not actually publish the figures because they do not want the negative publicity. This makes the common man an easy prey for the identity thief lurking around the corner.

There are many types of identity theft like business, finance, medical, and identity cloning. They are all equally harmful to the normal working of human society. There are a couple of ways to impede the process of identity theft, but they cannot completely make someone immune to the process.

They can be as simple as ensuring that you destroy all hard copies of documents pertaining to your finance. Or making sure you accompany the waiter to the cashier’s desk or you go personally to the cashier when you want to make a credit card payment in the restaurant. And also make sure you do not give out your personal information on the internet. And always question the authority or obligation of someone who is asking you for your personal information. Never dole it out to everyone who asks for it. And the most important, do not ever give out your password.

The repercussions of being robbed of your identity are very extreme. Some people get into depression. Some end up losing their job or worse their marriage. Many things can happen which will alter your life irreversibly. But it makes sense to realize that you are still alive at the end of it all.

Just imagine if it were an armed robbery. The psychological impact of such an event will forever alter your mindset. Be happy that the event did not physically harm you or violate you. Think of things which happen to people all around the world which are a hundred times worse. Tell yourself that you are still alive and that is the most important thing. You can win back your money, your marriage your job and everything else that you lost. But it is important that you win back your identity.

And if you have ever been a victim of identity theft, make sure you register yourself to one of the identity theft monitoring agencies. And also the credit score evaluating agencies which are authorized by the government. This will ensure that there can be no future damage to your identity. Because, unless and until a fugitive is caught, nothing much can be done to protect you without letting the relevant authorities know about the situation.

Last, but not the least, start looking at life from a different perspective. Use this experience constructively. Let other people know what happened to you. Write a book. Or just go out and learn a new skill. Life is too valuable to spend on worrying.